


White Blank Page

by eternaleponine



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, POV Alternating, POV First Person, Until It Isn't Anymore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 14:01:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Black Widow was not easily broken.  Natasha Romanoff is not easy to mend.</p><p>When a mission leaves Natasha with no memory of Clint, they both have the deal with the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Clint

I sit on the edge of her bed and watch her sleep. The fact that she let me into her room in the first place is progress, and the fact that she trusts me enough to sleep while I'm here is too. Her hair curls against her cheek, falling into her eyes, and I resist the urge to reach out and tuck it back behind her ear. I might wake her, and if I do...

It's just easier to let her sleep. I can almost pretend that things are back to normal. Or back to how they used to be, which isn't really normal by anyone's definition but ours, but isn't that all that matters? It felt that way, when it was just the two of us.

 _I miss you_ , I whisper, but only in my head. _You're right here, and I miss you._

I've been missing her for weeks. Months.

I'm afraid I'll be missing her forever.

It's easier for her. It has to be. Doesn't it?

Her forehead furrows and she frowns in her sleep, and although it's probably just a bad dream, I can't help thinking that somehow she knows what's in my head and she's disagreeing with me. It's impossible, but there it is. Just wishful thinking, probably. Because if she disagrees, then it means that I'm not the only one suffering. Which isn't a fair thing to think. This isn't easy on her, and I know it.

It seems like yesterday and an eternity ago, the last time I did this, the last time I watched over her. Everything feels like that, that was Before.

*

Her expression was blank when she came into my room, closing and locking the door behind her before sagging back against it. She held up a hand when I approached, and I stopped, one hand still out like I forgot that I'd extended it, but I hadn't. I just needed her to know that the offer was there. It was always there.

"When?" I asked.

"Tomorrow morning."

"Where?"

"Moscow."

"How long?"

"As long as it takes." She opened her eyes then, looked at me, and let it sink in for both of us.

None of those three things were a problem, in and of themselves. We were used to being sent away suddenly, and not knowing when we would return. She had been back to Russia more than once since she'd defected. She was a professional. We both were. Whatever went on behind closed doors, we knew we had jobs to do, and we would do them, however far apart it took us.

All three of them together, though... that wasn't easy. Especially not when the wounds of the not-so-distant past were still scarring over. (It would be a long time before they healed, and maybe they never would.) 

"Do you know who...?" I don't need to finish the question.

"Does it matter?" She pushed herself away from the door and took a step closer, but she didn't touch me.

"I guess not." Whoever was going to be her backup, whoever was responsible for keeping her safe out there, for getting her out if things went bad, it wouldn't be Coulson. He was the only one that either of us had trusted completely. He was the only one who had made us feel anything remotely like safe. 

And he was dead.

"I should get ready," she said, and I didn't try to stop her. There was only so far it was safe to push the Black Widow, even for me. 

She came back later, and there hadn't been any words, because what was there to say? _Stay safe_ just sounded silly and _Don't get yourself killed_ went without saying. _I'll miss you_ did too, and it just wasn't something that we said. That wasn't us.

I watched her sleep that night. I held her close and tried to soothe away the dreams – maybe memories – that haunted her unconscious mind.

In the morning she'd tried to sneak away without waking me up, but I'm not that heavy a sleeper. I kept my eyes mostly closed, letting her believe she was getting away with it. I watched her dress through slitted eyes, and only opened them when she was at the door.

She actually smiled, knowing she was caught, and blew me a kiss. It was an uncharacteristically sentimental gesture, and I wondered what had made her do it. 

*

I still wonder what made her do it. It haunts me, how peaceful we'd been in that moment, how blissfully domestic and ordinary. Like we were real people with real lives and not... ourselves.

I remember watching her go, my chest aching, and burying my face in her pillow after because it had been a long time since I'd felt that alone.

I had no idea then how much worse it could be. How much worse it _would_ be.

Because Natasha remembers none of it.


	2. Natasha

I wake up in a cold sweat from yet another dream where Clint is trying to kill me. Whether I was able to manipulate him or not, I can't pretend that Loki didn't get under my skin.

_"Is this love, Agent Romanoff?"_

_"Love is for children. I owe him a debt."_ An answer that is both true and a deflection from the truth.

The man who spared my life once, who changed it forever, tried to kill me. He wasn't himself, so I can forgive, but I can't forget. I forgave him long before he did, if he even has. If he ever will. Otherwise why would I be in his bed now, taking comfort in his breath against my neck and his arms around me, tightening a little like he knows I need him even in his sleep? I press back against him, crossing my arms over his, lacing our fingers together and holding on like I can keep us from coming undone.

From _being_ undone.

I let his breathing lull me and there are no more dreams. Morning comes and I slip out of bed as quietly as I can, getting dressed in yesterday's castoffs because I don't keep much here. It would make it... I don't know. Too real. 

I get to the door before he opens his eyes, but I think he's been awake all along. I smile, caught, and press my lips to my fingers and turn them to him. It's all I can do, because my throat is too tight for words (and what do you say? Not goodbye. Never goodbye.) and I can't let myself touch him. Not when I can't trust myself to be able to let go.

The door closes between us and I leave Natasha behind. I need to be Black Widow now, and she is as heartless and cold as the Siberian tundra. 

I go over the file that tells me what my mission is and who I'm supposed to be for the duration. There's a possibility that I won't be fooling anyone, and they'll know exactly who I am from the word go, but I absorb the details anyway, becoming another person for the hundredth or thousandth or millionth time. I lose track, and it doesn't matter. Even the "real" me is a fabrication. Natalia Alianovna Romanova is as fictional as every other role I play.

Almost every other role. 

But I can't think about that now. 

I meet Agent Caldwell when we touch down. He is my contact here, my backup, my escape route. I look him up and down, and my gut tells me to turn around and get back on the plane and go home. There is no warm fuzzy feeling here, and even if I don't expect one, I also don't like the cold slithering feeling that forms in my gut when we make eye contact.

Turning back isn't an option. I have a job and it needs to be done. I'll just need to make sure that I don't ever find myself in a situation where I need to rely on this man. I just need to get in, get done, and get out. It's not even that complicated a mission, considering my last major assignment was saving the world. At least this is one that I'm trained for. 

I tell myself it will be fine, and I try to relax as he briefs me on the situation and where things currently stand. When he leaves me alone for the night to rest before tomorrow's introduction to the client (read: mark), I try to figure out what exactly it is about him that's giving me bad feelings, but I can't pin it down, and finally have to put it aside or I won't sleep.

I meet my mark the next day, a businessman (arms or intelligence dealer or both) looking to broker a deal with the Russian government. My role is to act as a liaison of sorts, to help him navigate the city and to make sure that he experiences the best hospitality Moscow has to offer. I have no illusions about what or where the line is drawn (or isn't, as the case may be) but that is, as always, a last resort. I am to find out what he's selling, what he's receiving in exchange, and what threat level this presents. Further orders will come as necessary.

It quickly becomes clear that this assignment will not be short term. It also becomes clear, if not to anyone else then to me, that when I told Clint I was compromised, I wasn't lying. My thoughts drift to him too often, and it's not safe, especially as I get in deeper. 

So I do the only thing that I can, to protect him, and myself. To protect us. I take my thoughts, my memories, my feelings – everything that could give away what he means to me, that he means anything at all to me – and I stuff them in a box in my mind. I close it up and lock it away.

It's an old trick, one that I learned a long time ago in a place that, from here, is not so very away. When you know you're not safe, the things that matter have to be kept where no one could touch them, and sometimes that means not even you. Later, when the danger has passed or at least abated, you can go back and unlock the box and unpack its contents, but if you want to keep something yours and no one else's, if you want to make sure that it can't be stolen or used against you, there is no other choice.

He matters. So I take Clint Barton and I lock him up tight.

I forget him.


	3. Clint

It's hard to sleep without her. I toss and turn and when they offer me a job I take it, even though it's not really my skill set. It gets me away from the place where everything reminds me of Natasha and her absence and the nagging fear that somehow with her gone I'll lose myself again. I don't tell anyone about it, but there's part of me (the paranoid although I don't think it's completely unjustified part) that is afraid that Loki has just been biding his time, and now that I'm alone again, he's going to take back over.

I should probably talk to one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. shrinks about it. They should probably _make_ me talk to one of the shrinks about it, but I don't. I won't. I did all the talking I could manage with Nat, and I didn't – don't – need anything more than that.

When I come back, someone's taken away the sheets I tore off my bed in a fit of impotent rage more becoming of a two-year-old than a grown man, and the last trace of her scent is gone. It pisses me off but what am I going to do? I'm sure they thought they were doing me a favor. 

I try to ask about her, but I don't get any answers. If Coulson was here, he would try to give me _something_ , however small, or at least tell me why he couldn't. I can understand if they're worried that saying anything to anyone might somehow compromise her, but they don't say that. I'm just stonewalled.

So I come and I go, doing jobs that would probably be better assigned to other agents, and she's gone and still gone, and nothing. Crickets. Lather, rinse, repeat as needed, ad nauseum.

I'm dropping off my latest mission report when I overheard Director Fury asking Deputy Director Hill about the "Moscow Situation". I stop, hoping they haven't heard me, because unless there's someone else in Moscow, they have to be talking about Natasha.

"Nothing," Hill says. "Not a word."

"How long has it been?" Fury asks. 

"She went off the radar six days ago. We haven't heard anything from her or Caldwell, and neither have any of the other operatives in the area." Her voice drops low, and I have to strain to hear her. I inch closer, careful to keep my footsteps silent.

"Visual?"

"Nothing."

"Six days is a long time," Fury says, and it sounds like a warning. "Especially with what we were hearing before that."

My stomach clenches, and the papers in my hand crumple. There is silence in the office and I tense, ready to bolt if someone pokes their head out. I feel like a child caught listening in on mom and dad... or like I imagine a kid would feel like, not having too much experience in that kind of thing myself.

"We're working on finding her," Hill says. 

"Work harder."

"Yes sir."

It finally sinks in what they're saying, what I'm hearing. They've lost Natasha. No one has seen or heard from her in almost a week. She's in Moscow, where there could be people who still recognize her, people who might want her dead or worse (and if you don't think there's worse than dead, you live a charmed life), and they lost her.

I don't realize I'm moving until I'm blocking Hill's exit from the office, and Director Fury is glaring at me. "Where's Agent Romanoff?" I ask. 

"You know I can't tell you that," he replies, and maybe he still thinks that that bullshit answer is going to keep me quiet but he's wrong this time. She's been gone over a month and lost almost a week and I don't care that they don't have answers, I just want them to admit it.

"Because you don't know," I say. "You can't tell me because—"

"I suggest you stop right there, Agent Barton," Fury says. "I suggest you take a walk, and make it a long one. Because whatever you think, you're not going to help anyone by standing here telling me off."

It's a good thing I don't have my bow because if I did, he might lose the one eye he's got left. As it is, it's all I can do not to try something stupid anyway. But as much as I hate to admit it, he's right. It isn't going to help Natasha for me to lose it all over him.

I dump the now mangled report on his desk. "I want to know when you find her."

I don't wait for an answer because I know I'm not going to get one. Instead I take Fury's advice and take a long walk, out of the building that is one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s many non-seafaring/airborne headquarters, and out into the streets.

The bright lights of a bar draw me in, and countless drinks later dark eyes, dark hair and a ready smile draw me out again. She talks too much, about nothing that matters, and I'm not even listening but she doesn't seem to mind. She's nothing like Tasha, and maybe that's why I let it happen.

I know I'll regret it in the morning – the alcohol and the sex – but fuck it. She's lost and there's nothing I can do. I don't handle helpless well, and I'll drive myself crazy if I think too much about it. 

So for a little while, I let myself forget her.


	4. Natasha

Usually when things start slipping out of control, you know it. Even if you can't pinpoint exactly what's going wrong, you get a sense, a feeling in your gut, that something just isn't right, and you bring up your guard and start looking for ways to counteract it.

I have that feeling, but this time I'm too far down the spiral into disaster to find a handhold when I realize what's going down. I'm good, but this time they're better. 

It doesn't take long to figure out that it's an inside job. I don't let on, because maybe they don't know I know. I have nothing but instinct to go on when I decide that it's not the entirety of S.H.I.E.L.D. that has turned against me, but it's a vital decision. If I thought it was the entire organization, I would have no one to protect, nothing to hide. But it doesn't feel right, so instead I pin the blame much closer. 

It also doesn't take long to figure out that they know who I am. As such, they know, or they have an idea, what I fear. They know what I've been through, and they know the damage they can do. They strap me down and start pumping me full of drugs, trying to lower my defenses, to pick out the parts of my mind that they want and replace them with... what? I don't know. Maybe nothing. Maybe they'll turn me against those I have started to think of as friends, as the closest thing to family I've ever really had. 

I don't know, but I protect myself as best I can, trying to block off the places I don't want them to go so well that they don't even know they're there. I protect my handlers, my partners, the things that matter. 

They get some things, but they don't get everything. It's the best that I can do. They try to fill in the gaps, but I can feel the falseness of it, can see the places where it's as if they've torn out old photos in a scrapbook and pasted in new ones. It's not their best work, but they're in a hurry.

I can hope that they're rushing because they know that someone is coming for me, but I know that I can't rely on that. It's up to me to get myself out of this, and when I see my chance I take it, leaving a trail of carnage in my wake like I haven't done since... since before S.H.I.E.L.D., I think. Since the last time I spent this long in Russia.

I get myself out, and make my way to a bolt hole that they've set up for me. I make contact and they say they're already there. They give me rendezvous coordinates and a time.

I arrive early, but not too early. I'm not alone. Agent Caldwell is there, and he looks at me, and that look, that sidelong glance, is all that I need to confirm my suspicions. He's good. I won't deny it. But I'm better. I can read him, and I know that he orchestrated, or at least put into motion, most of what happened to me here. I suspect that I wasn't supposed to get out, and that's why he's eying me like prey might look at a predator. 

When they arrive to extract me, there is blood on my hands, and Agent Caldwell lies in a patch of crimson snow. I don't say anything to anyone all the way back, and they don't press me for answers. I think they're all afraid to even think about the questions at this point, and that suits me fine. This is going to be the debriefing from hell, and I'd rather not repeat myself.


	5. Clint

They tell me that they've found her, and that they're bringing her home. I go to meet the jet that she comes in on, but they hustle her away before I can get anywhere near her. Her name is on my lips, but I hold back, not wanting to make an idiot of myself shouting after her. 

She's in Fury's office for a long time, and in medical for even longer. No one will tell me what's going on, and they keep trying to send me away but I refuse to go. I will be there when she gets out. It's not a promise either of us has made, but we try to do it when we can, when one of us is sent away and the other isn't. 

I push myself away from the wall when they finally release her, and fall into step beside her. She glances at me, but doesn't say anything, so I just keep following. Whatever happened, it must be bad, but I knew that. You can't get lost for over a week in a place where a lot of bad things have happened to you in the past and have it be all hunky-dory. That isn't how things work. And if she doesn't want to talk about it, I'm not going to make her.

We get to the corridor where her quarters are and she finally stops, turns, glares at me. "What do you want?" she demands.

I don't have an answer. My mouth hangs open and no words come out, because... well, because I don't have an answer. Not one I can put into words, because we never needed them before. Not recently, anyway. Not in a long time.

"Why are you following me?"

Again, I have nothing. I hold up my hands, palms up, and she glances down at them, then back up at my face. "Did they tell you to follow me?" she demands.

"Who?" I finally manage.

" _Them._ Fury. Hill. Whoever is in charge of making sure that I'm fit to be allowed to wander the decks. Which I guess they must not think I am, if they've set you on me."

I feel like all of the air has been sucked from the room, from the entire helicarrier. "Tasha..."

A line forms between her brows, annoyance and confusion, and it starts to sink in, really sink in, that she doesn't have any idea who I am. She doesn't know me, or at least doesn't know who I am to her, because this isn't an act. This can't be an act. 

"No, they didn't tell me to follow you," I say. "Sorry." I turn and walk away before she can ask any more questions that I can't answer. 

I head to Fury's office and I tell him that Agent Romanoff has been compromised. 

"How do you know?" he asks. "They cleared her in medical."

I don't say that if Coulson was here, he would have noticed right away that something was wrong, and if Coulson had been there this would never have happened in the first place, because I don't need to be reminded of everything I've lost all at once.

What I have to say is bad enough. The words are slow in coming because saying them makes them feel true. "She doesn't know me," I tell him. "She has no idea who I am."

He looks at me for a long time, then finally nods. "I'll have her brought back in."

I stay out of sight, but I watch as they bring her back to medical, lock her in a room there, until they can figure out what's been done. She must not have forgotten everything, if she managed to get this far without them detecting it, but something's not right, and we have to know what for all of our sake.

At least that's what I tell myself.

I wish I was back on land. I would call that woman, the one who wasn't Natasha, who giggled and batted her eyes and lacked all of the Black Widow's subtlety, all of her grace and manipulative charm. I would lose myself in the physical so I wouldn't have to think or feel. But I'm not. She's not the only willing woman in the world, and I'm sure I could find someone, but there's only one woman I want right now, and she doesn't even know I exist.

Every target that night is some nameless Russian, and every shot is a bullseye.


	6. Natasha

They tell me Agent Barton wants to see me. It's been two days. They tell me that he was my partner once, that we were close. They tell me that he was the one that brought me in to S.H.I.E.L.D. after defying the order he had been given to kill me. They look at me like they expect this to mean something to me. It doesn't.

"Let him in."

It's the man who followed me when I first came back, when they let me go and then turned around and had me locked up again. He stands near the door like he's not sure whether he should approach or not. Like he's not sure it's safe. Maybe he thinks I'm mad at him, and maybe I should be, but I can't blame him for reporting it, when I didn't react to him in the way that he expected. I would have done the same. 

"Hey," he says. "I'm sorry about this."

"Don't be." There's still a chance that I could be a danger. There's still a chance that they did more to me than I know, that I'm a ticking time bomb about to explode. It could be they programmed me, but I don't think so. 

"You really..." he starts but doesn't finish. Because he doesn't want the answer or because he already has it, I don't know. 

I really don't remember. 

I expect that he'll leave, but he doesn't. He talks, and I respond, and it's all very pleasant; I can be very charming, but it's killing him. He finally stops, comes closer, sits next to me on the edge of my bed. His fingers twitch and I stiffen. I could let him touch me; I can see that he wants to. But it would mean something to him that it doesn't to me and I don't need to remember him to know that he's a good guy and doesn't deserve that. 

There was a time in my life when I wouldn't have cared, but that's not here and not now. That much, at least, I remember. That much, they haven't taken away from me. 

"Natasha," he says softly, "It's going to be okay."

I suppress a snort. "Do you know that? Is that what you know?"

He looks at me like I've slapped him. I could ask, but I don't, and finally he gets up and goes, and I'm alone until they decide to pull me in for my next session of neural reprogramming or whatever they want to call it. Cognitive recalibration. Making sure that what was put in gets taken out, trying to figure out if the memories they replaced are actually gone or just buried. 

Maybe he's right. Maybe I'll be okay. But I wonder what definition of 'okay' he's using, and if his is the same as mine. 

They let me out a few days later, as confident as they can be that there's no one still in my head, and that they've erased any possibility of a switch being flipped, a trigger being pulled, whatever analogy you'd like that means that I'll bring about their destruction. My mind feels like a raw wound, poked and prodded and torn apart and pieced back together, and I lock myself in my room because all I want is to be alone for a while.

I think maybe I'll find respite in sleep.

I think wrong.


	7. Clint

The worst thing is the lack of trust. I could deal with the rejection on every other level, but the fact that she doesn't trust me anymore... that's what hurts, and keeps hurting.

I can see it in the dark smudges under her eyes and the way she holds herself that she's not sleeping. Something is keeping her awake at night, and I remember for both of us when she first came here, and how I was after Loki, and it's not hard to guess that she's plagued with nightmares. I stay near her, on the periphery but close enough to keep an eye on her, and sometimes she lets me closer. We train together, and once in a while it feels almost like it used to, but then she'll say something or do something that reminds me that this is not my Natasha. Not anymore.

One night I find her walking the corridors, arms wrapped around herself like she's cold, and my fingers ball into fists as I resist the urge to reach out and pull her to me, to warm her up. Maybe she wouldn't have let me before, but she definitely won't now, so instead I fall into step beside her.

She glances at me and keeps walking, not speeding up or slowing down, not trying to get away, and after a little while she seems to relax a little, or maybe it's resignation that drains the tension from her shoulders. "It's funny," she says finally. "They had me in medical, put me through every scan there was, had me talk to shrinks, all of that, and the whole time I feel _fine_. They finally decide that I am, and as soon as they let me go, I start falling apart."

Why is she telling me this? Why _me_ , when from what I've seen she remembers pretty much everyone _except_ me? (And I'm not even going to pretend that that doesn't sting.)

"Falling apart how?"

She looks at me again and shrugs, gestures vaguely at the corridor, and yeah, it was a stupid question because doing laps of the helicarrier somewhere between midnight and dawn isn't exactly normal. "I remember... things," she says after a minute. "Things from a long time ago."

I fight back the urge to touch her again, wrestle my thoughts into order so that when I finally open my mouth I don't say anything stupid.

"You know where to find me if you don't want to be alone," I tell her. 

She nods, and that's as far as she'll bend tonight. The next time we pass her room, she stops and goes in. She looks at me for a long moment, studying me, before closing it.

"Good night," I say. I don't know if she hears. I know that neither of us will be sleeping much tonight, her because of things surfacing that were probably better left buried, and me because all I'll be thinking about is her, and whether there's any hope of her remembering me.

Her mind is, and always has been, all partitions and walls, and now that they're cracking, will some light shine through, or only darkness?


	8. Natasha

I don't know why I told him that things were starting to come back. He is still a blank, and I don't know why. I should talk to the shrink about it, but somehow when I'm sitting across from her, the words don't come. By all accounts, Clint Barton was my best friend, my partner, and maybe more than that, although no one seems entirely sure on that point, and he's not saying. 

He gives me space and I'm glad. Or, I should be glad, but there's a part of me that wishes he wouldn't. Because now, with other things falling into place and things that don't belong being shaken loose, I can _feel_ the places where he is missing. I know the void, the dark places, are where he used to be.

I wake from yet another nightmare and throw off the blankets, stumbling out of bed and into the living area of my small suite. I flip on the light and go to the sink, drinking a glass of water and wishing it was something stronger. I press the cool glass to my feverish skin and only then notice that I'm soaked through with sweat. I go back into the bedroom and pull out a clean t-shirt from the drawer, oversized, and pull it on.

It's his. I don't know how I know it, but I do. It's his, and it's obviously a favorite because it's been worn so many times it's almost translucent and the material is soft as skin. 

There's a knock on the door and I go to it but don't answer. 

"Natasha?"

I'm relieved to hear his voice. It slows my racing heart just a little, and lets me catch my first full breath since waking. 

"I saw your light come on. I..." He falters. "Are you okay?"

I don't ask what he was doing close enough to see my light come on in the middle of the night. The idea that he was there, watching out for me, is comforting. I don't need anyone to look after me, to take care of me, and he knows that. I'm sure he knows that, because right now I think he knows me better than I know myself. But needed or not, the fact that he cares enough to be there, the fact that he could have just given up and didn't, hasn't, won't...

"I'm going to stay right here, Nat, okay? I won't let anything hurt you."

A childish promise, and he can't protect me from the demons in my own head. But I hear him settle down on the floor just outside the door, leaning against it, and I do the same, shoulder to shoulder except there's a door between us.

"This reminds me of Budapest," he says. "Do you remember Budapest?"

The word brings sudden, bright images to my mind. The report of a shot and all the shades of red of spilled blood. The heat of fire, too close, and the smell of gunpowder and death. I remember dragging ourselves back to a hotel, exhausted but miraculously uninjured, save a few scrapes and bruises. I remember standing under the spray of the shower for a long, long time. I remember a knock on the door and answering it with a gun.

"If you're nodding, Tasha, I can't hear you."

I laugh. I can't help it. It startles me, and I wonder if it surprises him, too. It's been a long time since I've laughed. "I remember." 

Yes, I remember Budapest, and I remember something else, too. A moment we shared in the middle of a battle against seemingly impossible odds.

"You and I _still_ remember Budapest very differently."

This time he laughs, and then sighs, and then it's quiet again, but the silence isn't uncomfortable, and that's one of the things I like about him, that I've always liked. I close my eyes and chase the flash of memory, trying to pin it down, to replay it like a movie, to put it back in its proper place so I can't lose it again.

I remember Budapest. I remember him bringing me food, and dessert, and I remember a war raging in my head worse than the firefight we'd just been through, and I remember surrendering. I remember finding peace in giving in, in him.

I remember Budapest. 

I stand up and unlock the door. I pull it open and let him in, and when he reaches for me I fall into his arms and hold on tight. I breathe him in and soak in the warmth of him, and I don't know what that memory means in context, but having it is enough to let me have this moment where, for the space of a few heartbeats, I feel whole again.

I'm not ready to let that feeling go. I ask him to stay, and he sits by my bed when I go to sleep and keeps his promise not to let anything hurt me, even in my dreams.


	9. Clint

I get my partner back first. Whatever is going on in her head, whatever has come back to her, it's enough to help rebuild the trust we had, the unshakeable knowledge that we have each other's backs, always. The missions we are sent on, always together, are simple things, but they prove to us and to our superiors that we can still do this. 

I get my friend back next. Sometimes she startles both of us, responding to something I've said or done the same way she would have before everything went sideways. It's like the responses are reflex, muscle memory, and she doesn't know what she's doing until she's done it, and we look at each other and she blinks and I blink and we don't quite know what to do. Sometimes her forehead furrows in a question, and I nod in answer, and she smiles, a little, but then she never smiled a lot.

We don't talk about it. They're still forcing her to see a shrink, and the last thing she wants is to have to talk about it with anyone else. We spar instead, or go to the shooting range, or watch a movie. Things friends do. Things we do, or did.

One night she follows me back to my room, and neither of us question it because it's something that's happened a thousand times before, and it's been a good day. (Some aren't so good, and some are bad and I can't even get near her.) She leans her shoulder against mine as we sit on the couch, watching some show that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, occasionally commenting on how we hope that we never encounter anything like the stuff they're investigating. 

And I'm still not questioning it when instead of going back to her room after the TV is switched off, she follows me to mine. I haven't forgotten that things aren't normal, but it's nice to pretend for a while that they are. 

I see it in her eyes, though, as she lays down beside me, that this doesn't feel normal for her. There's a hesitation there, an uncertainty that I so rarely see from her even now that I open my mouth to tell her that she doesn't have to do this. But she knows that. She knows she doesn't have to. This is her choice. 

I just don't know what it means.

We lay there, facing each other, not touching, and she's staring at me and I don't look away. My heart pounds against my ribcage, and in a fit of stupid I blurt out, "I slept with someone else."

She goes stiff and still. Her jaw tenses, and the corners of her eyes tighten. "Here?" she asks, poking her finger into the mattress.

"No."

A beat. I hold my breath.

"It doesn't matter," she says. "I don't own you."

Which is true enough. We never made rules about those kinds of things. We're both adults, free to do what and who we want. We've never even really defined what we have. (Had? I don't want to think it.) It never seemed important. It still doesn't, except I don't know if she remembers that, or what she thinks of us, and I should at least be honest about things. 

She closes her eyes, and I watch her. Creepy, maybe, but I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. I don't know who she'll be in a day, a week, a month. Neither does she. Which I guess is always true, but it feels truer now than it ever did before. 

She stays like that, unmoving, for so long that I think she's fallen asleep. I'm about to roll over and try to catch a little shuteye myself when she looks at me again. "Don't move," she whispers, and I freeze, because she wouldn't say something like that without a good reason, and years of working together has taught me that when she's got that intense look on her face, she means business and not listening to her is at my own peril.

Natasha pushes herself up on one elbow and leans over me, her other hand coming up to touch my cheek lightly, her fingers tracing my jaw. My fingers twitch against the sheets. I can feel her breath on my face, the heat of her skin even through her clothes and mine. Her hair is like a fiery curtain framing her face as she leans in closer still.

I don't move as she kisses me, soft and fleeting, and then pulls away again. I open my eyes and she gives me a lopsided smile and half a shrug, and when she settles back down, it's closer, close enough that we're touching now, a little.

She worms one arm under my shoulders, pulling me to her, and I rest my head on her shoulder, not for the first time. I feel her cheek against my hair, and she whisper-sings me songs half-forgotten from a childhood that's mostly a lie. Does she think it's true again, or does she know? And which is worse?

Tears fill my eyes because this is not a new moment. This is another habit, the way things often are as we settle in for the night, and her body remembers, even if her mind doesn't. She rubs my back and she murmurs what could be nonsense, soothing me in a language I don't speak, but she doesn't have to find the right words if she knows I can't understand anyway.

The ache in my chest eases, and maybe she can sense that somehow, or maybe she's just had enough, because she extricates her arm and rolls onto her side, her back to my chest like she's always done. I fit myself around her and she presses back against me, and the lump is back in my throat, but I have to believe that this means things will eventually go back to normal between us, because if I let myself think anything else, it's too fucking painful to stand.

"Good night, Tasha," I whisper, my lips brushing the side of her neck.

Her fingers lace through mine and she squeezes gently. _Good night, Clint._ She doesn't have to say it for me to know.


	10. Natasha

They send Clint out on his own for the first time since I came back. They've been having him baby-sit me, more or less, and sometimes it pisses me off but most of the time I'm glad to have him around, even though it only reminds me of the gaps that still remain in my memory, the missing pieces that form his image in the puzzle that is my life. But the more I'm around him, the more I believe that the pieces aren't gone for good. I just have to figure out where I put them.

He comes back a few days later, and I wait for him to come find me, aware of the irony because not so long ago (although it's been over a month now since I came back) he was the one waiting for me. Finally I go looking, only to discover that his debriefing is done and he was cleared by medical over an hour ago.

I head back towards quarters, thinking maybe he just needed sleep. But I see him come out of someone's room, and one doesn't need to be a spy to figure out what they've been doing. And I don't know if I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time or the right one.

He doesn't see me. Not at first, but I don't move from where I'm standing. When he does see me he stops, his expression going instantly wary and a little sheepish. Ashamed at being caught, maybe. He starts walking, and I stay where I am, at war with myself.

Black Widow does not follow anyone. She is cold and hard and she may take orders, but she doesn't _follow_ anyone. She doesn't _need_ anyone.

She is who I am, but she's not all I am. Not anymore. I have a choice. With him, before and more than anyone else, I have always had a choice. 

Black Widow doesn't follow him, but Natasha – Tasha to him and no one else – does. I follow him. He hasn't led me wrong yet. Before him, I was a machine at best, and a monster at worst. Before me, he was just a government mercenary, working for the greater good but still a killer for hire. 

Together, we are more than that. Together, we are better than we ever were apart.

"It didn't mean anything," he says, standing in the open door of his rooms. "I just... needed to blow off some steam. It was a rough assignment. Didn't go well."

It stings. It was one thing to know there had been someone when I wasn't here, but now I am and he chose someone else anyway. He didn't even give me a chance to be what he needed. I tell myself it shouldn't matter, but it does. He's watched and waited, been there all along, and now, suddenly, when he needs me to return the favor, he doesn't trust me to be able to do it.

I could get angry. I could walk away. But it wouldn't solve anything. 

_You knew where to find me. It's what you would have done before. I'm not going to break, Clint. I don't need to be coddled. I'm still_ me _. I'm still here, and I'm still yours._ But those are all the things we don't say. I just look up at him. 

"I don't want to give you that part of me right now," he says. 

He won't look me in the eye until I make him, and then he can't look away, because what I say is, "I want all of you, Clint. Even the parts you don't want yourself."

There is no turning back from this moment without shattering what we have, and we both know it. I loosen my grip on the front of his shirt, but he puts his hands over mine, holds them there for a moment before pulling them away. He doesn't let go of me. He brings them to his face, kisses my knuckles. "I need to shower."

"Okay."

He lets my hands drop, probably expecting me to stay there, but I don't. I strip down and follow him into the shower, and wash away any trace of her from his skin. The water streams down over us and I imagine the past, all of the parts that we just want to put behind us, swirling down the drain. 

There's a scar on his left side, above the hip, and I put my right hand over it, tracing it with my thumb, where there is a scar at the base that is its companion. I cut myself pulling a piece of shrapnel from the wound so I could patch it up. I did my best, but it got infected anyway, both of them did, and he was feverish and shaking when help finally came days later, and I held him tight and wouldn't let him go, and that was before Budapest. 

"I remember," I tell him.

"So do I," he says, and his arms are around me and his lips meet mine and time stops and the whole world is only that moment, only him and me, and the moment stretches longer and longer and one of us remembers to turn off the water but I couldn't tell you who.

I ask him later what will happen if I don't ever completely remember. He tells me it doesn't matter. "Anything you don't remember..." he whispers, breath warm against my skin, sweat-sticky and still damp from the shower as we curl around each other. "Anything you don't remember we'll just rewrite."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [tryslora](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora) and Gwen for the beta. 
> 
> Title is from a Mumford & Sons song that inspired this story more than a little.


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